


we can live forever

by merthurxmalec



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), F/M, Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Sort Of, based on ig post, the Steve/Tony is implied here because I am physically incapable of writing a fic without them, this is a 'fuck the end I'm gonna do it my way' fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 08:51:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18847690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merthurxmalec/pseuds/merthurxmalec
Summary: SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME~Tony knew from the moment FRIDAY told him that the model was successful that he was going to die.





	we can live forever

**Author's Note:**

> I think I'm at the 'bargaining' stage of grief, so watch me throw fix-its at y'all. 
> 
> this is not beta'd and barely even proof-read. I literally wrote this in the last hour sitting at uni because I don't want to revise Contract Law
> 
> title is from 'History' by One Direction

Tony knew from the moment FRIDAY told him that the model was successful that he was going to die.

 

In all honesty, he hadn’t expected it to actually work. He hadn’t lied when he told Steve and the others that he wants no part in it – is going to have no part in it. At a deeper level, Tony knows he was being selfish. The world ended the day Thanos snapped his fingers, and the end of the world left no survivors. Steve had come into the medbay with a solemn look on his face that day, a lifetime ago, not long after Tony woke up. Tony doesn’t know how long Steve had been standing there, staring but not crossing the threshold into Tony’s room, as if that would break something that should remain intact.

 

The thing is, everything between them had been broken into tiny pieces years ago. The millions of shreds of glass were no longer recoverable, and with that there was no hope of salvaging anything.

 

“Are you just going to stand there, Rogers,” Tony had rasped out in a croaky voice, “or are you planning to come in at some point?”

 

Steve still hadn’t moved.

 

“We found Thanos,” Steve said, still not looking at Tony. “We’re heading out at 0900.”

 

Tony looks at him for a long time, waiting for him to look up, to continue – to say something, anything.

 

See, the thing is – Tony doesn’t regret what he said to Steve. Sure it was harsh, and it was an emotional outburst more than anything. If Tony hadn’t been at the emotional peak he was in at the time, he’s sure he would have said it differently.

 

It doesn’t mean that what he said isn’t true.

 

The vision Wanda showed Tony all those years ago – it broke him. Tony Stark didn’t let people in, didn’t know how to. The concept of family was foreign to him, a myth that to him was equivalent to the one of Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster. Never in his whole life did Tony ever think he would get to have this, get to have a family. Every single thing that had ever happened in his life pointed to that fact, after all. He had a father who didn’t love him, a mother who was always too lost, a man who had held the position of father-figure in his life for so long – the same man who ordered a hit to kill on him. And sure, he had Rhodey, but Rhodey was busy, Rhodey had his own life. It was a life Tony knew Rhodey would drop in a heartbeat if Tony asked him to, but he could never ask that. He had Pepper and he was grateful for that, he really was, but he was sometimes hit with the feeling that when Pepper looked at him, she wanted to see a different man – one Tony didn’t know how to be.

 

Tony was used to be being alone, and he was fine with it. He really was. But then aliens attacked New York, and in their wake they left destruction and debris, but they also left him a family.

 

A family Tony never thought he could have, or even wanted to have. But a family Tony slowly found out he could not, would not, lose at any cost.

 

Wanda’s vision? That is exactly what it showed him. And yes, Tony panicked – he was the futurist, and he needed to stop it. The universe has taken so much from him. He won’t let it take his family too. He can’t.

 

There was only beacon of hope he had been given in that dark time, where whenever he closed his eyes the only thing he saw was his family – dead. Dead, because of him. Because he couldn’t save them.

 

Steve. His hope.

 

“Together,” he had said, and Tony had believed him.

 

But then he got stranded in space, holding a kid he had come to love as his son as he begged him to not let go. He had spent days drifting aimlessly surrounded by a blanket of darkness, his hands covered with a grittiness that he knows is ash – ash, of the only bit of warmth the universe had granted him to break the ice that had embedded in his chest in the cold snow of Siberia.

 

In simple terms, he had given up.

 

Steve’s words infuriated him. _How can you still keep going?_ He wanted to shout. _How can you still look me in the eye and tell me we need to keep going, when you weren’t there?_

He doesn’t regret the words he said, nor the ones he didn’t say, but he does regret hurting Steve. He will always regret hurting Steve.

 

“We will bring him back, Tony,” Steve says, finally looking him in the eye. “We will bring them all back.”

 

Tony says nothing, just turns his body to face the other way, the opposite direction to Steve. The simple movement leaves him exhausted, every muscle in his body aching, a sweet pain coursing through his veins he knows he deserves.

 

_Idontwannagoidontwannagopleasesiridontwannago_

Somehow, he thinks this physical pain is nothing to the one he knows he would feel if he saw the look on Steve’s face as he turned his back and walked out.

 

When Natasha had walked into his room sometime later – hours, days, months, he doesn’t know – to tell them they failed, Tony only nods.

 

He moves his things out of the Compound the next day. They lost, and they didn’t do it together. They were never meant to be together.

 

Tony realises then that his vision came true. He did lose his family.

 

And so, he made it his life’s mission to make a new one. Morgan – she was perfect. The first time Tony held her in his arms, he was hit by a paralysing fear that left as old as life itself. He had cradled her to his chest, and tried his best to banish the thoughts of the way Peter had felt cradled close to him in his dying moments.

 

Tony had a second chance now, though. He had a chance to do it right. Morgan became his whole life, and he knew that he can’t lose this, not again. So yes, Tony wasn’t lying when he told the Avengers he wants no part in it, no part in anything that might make him lose the only thing that has kept him going on in the last five years.

 

But then he saw that picture of Peter, and in that moment, he was filled with hope.

 

He has spent the last five years thinking of how their life would have been with Peter added to the mix, with the joyous buoyant personality that was unique to only his kid. When Pepper tells Tony she is pregnant, Tony buys a t-shirt that says ‘Big Bro,’ an arrow pointing upwards. The t-shirt is cheap and tacky and exactly the thing Peter would love. He imagines a different universe where he would sit Peter down and give that to him, tell him that he is so proud his baby would have a big brother like Peter to look up to. The day Morgan was born, he imagined Peter’s reaction, the way the kid would barely be able to contain his energy as Tony would lead him down the hall to Morgan’s crib to meet his little sister. When Morgan asks him for a Lego set, he imagines Peter sitting next to her for hours, painstakingly putting every piece together. He tells Morgan about Peter too, of course, and about Spiderman – keeps the memory alive, because he couldn’t keep the person. He ensures that Peter is a part of their family, but he isn’t dumb. He knows it is nothing but a fantasy, a pipe dream because he is too much of a coward to accept the truth.

 

But that night, when he looks down at the picture of Peter, he lets himself see the dreams as reality. In that moment, he knows he has to try.

 

Whatever it takes.

 

But he doesn’t expect to come out of it alive.

 

Tony Stark is a futurist, and he has learnt the hard way that the inevitable can never be avoided.

 

When he sees Strange hold up his finger, he knows what he has to do.

 

And so he does it, he adorns the stones onto his gauntlet and gives himself a moment to let the satisfaction wash over him as he sees the realisation of failure slowly cloud Thanos’ eyes.

 

“And I,” he rasps out, letting the small smirk escape onto his lips, “am Iron Man.”

 

He moves his fingers, about to click and let it all _end,_ when he hears a shout.

“Stark!” he hears Quill say, rushing towards him with Gamora and Nebula and Rocket in tow, “quick, take my hand!”

 

“No,” Tony says, his head shaking, “it’ll kill you!”

 

Quill reaches his side, his hand clasping around his left hand. “Just trust me,” he says.

 

He holds Tony’s hands, and then extends his other hand out to Gamora, who takes it with a silent understanding in her eyes. Nebula gives a small smile to Tony as she wraps her hand around Gamora’s, taking hold of Rocket’s hands. Slowly, the entire battlefield starts crowding around them. Quill lets go of Tony’s hands for a second, only to grasp onto Peter’s as he joins the circle hand in hand with Rhodey and Pepper. Rhodey grabs onto his left hand, giving Tony a small smile as he says, “I told you, Tones, next time you ride with me.”

 

He sees a circle forming around them – Clint and Hope and Scott and Bruce and Strange and Wong all joining hands to his left. He sees Bucky and Sam with their hands joined, too, T’Challa and Shuri and Okoye and the rest of Wakanda all in tow. Finally, he feels someone wrap their fingers around his right hand, gloved fingers ghosting over the stone. He turns to see Steve’s face, cowl and helmet abandoned, blue eyes twinkling even in the darkness. His other hand is wrapped around Sam’s, but the grip he has on Tony’s right gauntlet hand is strong and unbreakable, even when he loosens slightly to grab onto his wrist to leave his finger.

 

“Together,” he says, and Tony feels himself smile. He looks around at the protective circle that has formed around him, at his family. He looks Thanos straight in the eyes as he says, “we are the Avengers.”

 

And then he snaps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is based on an ig post I saw about all the superheroes sharing the power of the stones together, which would (hopefully) lead to Tony surviving. Watch me pretend that is what happens at the end from now on :)


End file.
